


Hunger

by Dragontrill



Series: Broken [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 20:39:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2039340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragontrill/pseuds/Dragontrill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Hulk wants something that Bucky has, how can Steve stop him without violence?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunger

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [Hunger](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3152789) by [ogawaryoko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ogawaryoko/pseuds/ogawaryoko)



> I did some fanart for this to practice my comic drawing (plus I wanted to draw Bucky doing parkour). It's here. http://hydraarill.tumblr.com/image/108690289643

Someone gave them Paninis.

Steve was grateful, not that he’d been entirely sure at first what a Panini was. Apparently it was a meat and cheese sandwich that had been pressed and grilled. Even if they were mostly cold by the time they were brought to them, they were delicious. Granted, hungry as he was, Steve could have eaten rations left over from WWII and not cared.

It had been a long battle against Doom’s robots, followed by a longer clean-up while Doom screamed about diplomatic immunity and political rights. They needed a fifteen minute break to shovel food and water into their bellies.

Steve shoved about half of a pork and cheese Panini into his mouth and tried to remember to actually chew as he looked around at his team. They were scattered through the rubble, trying to ignore the paparazzi and fans being held back by police while they refuelled.

Tony had his helm off and his feet up, bitching about his sandwich to Wilson, who rolled his eye at him and took a swig of his water. Sam looked worn out, as did Tony, though he’d deny it forever.

Natasha and Clint didn’t look tired at all, sitting together without talking, but Steve had worked with them long enough that he knew both of them were ready for this break.

Thor on the other hand wasn’t tired at all. He looked ready to go a few more weeks at least, but was finishing off his sandwiches willingly enough. The Hulk wasn’t tired either, apparently unwilling to turn back into Bruce as he lumbered around the group and grabbed for any sandwich that wasn’t hidden from sight before he arrived. Tony lost his lunch that way, though he wasn’t stupid enough to do more than bitch loudly about it.

Steve looked at the last member of his team. Bucky wasn’t an official member of the team. He wasn’t even supposed to leave Avengers tower, but he’d showed up anyway, covered Steve’s back during the fight, and not said anything. Since he couldn’t exactly truss him up and haul him back to his room, Steve left him to it, though he kept a closer eye on him than he did the others. Bucky did well enough, though he did rip Doom’s robots apart with enough violence that Steve was pretty sure his therapists wouldn’t be happy with him.

Right now he was still quieter than Steve remembered, sitting cross-legged on a pile of rubble, hunched over and gnawing at his sandwich with a devotion that was almost obsessive. Bucky, they’d learned, was extremely defensive of his food, to the point where he’d nearly stabbed Clint when it was the archer’s turn to wash the dishes and he tried to take Bucky’s plate with a small piece of toast still on it.

Steve just hoped that there wasn’t anything too spicy in that sandwich. Bucky’s stomach wasn’t too good with solids yet either. His nutritionist was probably going to have a fit when she saw on the news what he was eating.

Steve looked at his watch. “Five more minutes,” he warned them. There was a lot of damage left to clean up and it did worlds of good for their reputation to help out.

“I hate this,” Tony whined. “This is why I have people to clean. Can’t I send them?”

“Only if they can lift a ton of rubble at a time,” Steve told him.

“I hate you.”

Finished with Tony’s sandwich, the Hulk knuckle-walked his way around to where Bucky was eating, perked up at the sight of his sandwich. Bucky saw him coming and stilled, eyes narrowed.

“HULK HUNGRY,” Hulk said.

Bucky leaned as far away as he could and hissed at him.

Steve had seen a lot of situations go FUBAR during the war, but none quite so fast as this. Infuriated, the previously mellow Hulk roared and lunged at Bucky, who shot him between the eyes with a gun Steve would have sworn he didn’t have on him two seconds before and vaulted out of the way of being crushed. The Hulk wasn’t hurt by the shot; it just pissed him off more.

Everyone else dodged for cover while the paparazzi took pictures and Bucky parcoured his way around the Hulk’s ground-cracking punches, still holding his sandwich.

Steve didn’t even think. He just ran between the two of them, hands held up at the Hulk. “Stop!” he yelled.

Hulk paused, fists raised above his head and a frown on his face. “WHY STOP? WANT FOOD.”

Off at the edge of Steve’s peripheral vision, Bucky settled down on the hood of a broken car and started gobbling down his sandwich again as if the fight hadn’t even happened.

With the Hulk, it was best to keep things simple. “You can’t have his food, Hulk. It’s not fair.”

“WHY NOT? HUNGRY!”

“Bucky’s hungry too,” Steve said, and it always broke his heart to think that Bucky was like a feral dog afraid its meal would be taken from it.

“HUNGRIER!”

The Hulk looked like he was about to jump over him or flatten him or something and Steve sighed. “I know. But you have to be nice.”

“HULK NOT NICE!”

“Try?” Steve pleaded.

“WHY?”

Because nobody wanted to deal with the amount of damage the Hulk could do, or what it would do psychologically to Bucky, provided he didn’t end up as a leather and metal smear on the ground.

“Because you know how the bad military men were always after you before you joined us?”

“HULK REMEMBER. WHAT THAT DO WITH SANDWICH?”

“Well, men like that were after Bucky once too, but he wasn't as strong as you are and they caught him,” Steve told him. “A long time ago. And they didn’t let him have any sandwiches. They didn’t let him have anything. So let him have this.”

The Hulk stared at him and Steve honestly didn’t know how much of that he understood, but he lowered his arms and shuffled off and Steve breathed a sigh of relief before he got everyone else back to work, including Bucky once he finished eating.

Twenty minutes later, when the Hulk returned and dropped an entire store’s worth of chocolate bars on Bucky, Steve figured that maybe he got it after all.

 


End file.
